Moral code

Throughout history, philosophers have invested a great deal of effort, and time in establishing a moral code to assist themselves and others in helping make the correct choices, to thrive as a community and achieve happiness. The primary purpose of this paper is to present the moral code of two notable philosophers, Aristotle and Ayn Rand. Both of them agree that activities which flourish life are good, and the ones that hinder its growth are evil. Moreover, both philosophers recognize happiness or eudaimonia as the ultimate goal of an individual in their lifetime, and both of them present their version of a moral code that would help an individual achieve happiness or the best life. I also discuss how both of them might disagree on the concept of friendship, as the underlying principles that constitute friendship for both of them differ. While Rand does inherit basic ideas from Aristotle's accounts, she presents them in her manifestations wherever possible and contributes to it hence setting the pathway for me to show what I think Aristotle might be able to learn from Ayn Rand as a modern philosopher.

Human beings, according to Aristotle's thinking, are composed of two features, reason and passion. Reason is the distinguishing ability possessed by humans, which allows them to make decisions consciously, by verifying facts and applying logic based on the existing or newly mined information. Aristotle further divides reason into two parts, first, whereby we contemplate the things with invariable causes and second, whereby we deliberate concerning actions whereas passion can be a feeling of intense enthusiasm towards an individual, object or activity. According to the Aristotelian model, reason is concerned with actual doing rather than mere ideas as it guides and governs the behavior of individuals rather than just directing them to the appropriate means for satisfying their desires, or passions.

For Aristotle, an agent that satisfies the conception of what is perfect experiences eudaimonia; the highest form of human good. In simpler terms, eudaimonia can be translated as living a virtuous life – the good life. For instance, in this universe, if you are a baker, you should excel at baking delicious cakes; if you are a soldier, you should excel at combat; and if you are a flute maker, you should excel at perfectly carving wooden flutes. Since each person plays several roles in their lives, it is by excelling in each of these roles that one achieves the state of eudaimonia. Activities that an agent engages in and experiences eudaimonia, exhibit virtue or arete – also translated as excellence, in accordance with reason. Hence, the ideal function of an Aristotelian agent can be defined as the perfect exercise of reason since action is rational only if the agent does it to promote his eudaimonia. Moreover, the good is an end in itself and is desired for the value it holds. It is an integral part of a teleological system that comprises of several actions that an individual could adopt. An agent that fails in respect of their arete and of their good, eudaimonia, are the ones that have submitted to error or have moved away from the path of becoming an ideal agent. While there could be several sources of such errors, one is immaturity. Young agents can reason badly due to their lack of knowledge but the ones who do reason well, might still be misguided by their untrained passions. Some agents might be immature even after their days of youth are long gone as reflective in the fact that they never developed the maturity of intelligence and character. For instance, an adult having a reverse age prejudice. These agents without the required intellect, character or education will make errors as their inherent qualities of mind and character will not dictate their actions to pursue its true telos, as their passions prevent and divert their attention from reason.

All Aristotelian agents are born with the potential to become virtuous and practically wise, given that they go through two stages as they grow up, one, they must develop the proper habits in order to fully develop the ability to reason and two, they must acquire phronesis – wisdom related to practical work. Phronesis implies excellence of the character along with good judgement skills of an agent. When a virtuous agent has decided what to do, he does not have to contend with contrary desires to do otherwise as he realizes that the circumstances call for foregoing their pleasures, and passions. Contrary desires could be better understood as the inner conflict of doing the right thing but wishing you could have done something else, such as not taking a bribe but wanting to have taken it. Aristotle classified the agents who suffer from this internal conflict between reasons and passion into three categories, continence (enkratic), incontinence (akratic), and vicious. Sometimes agents having reached a decision about what to do in a particular situation, experience an internal pressure brought on by a strong desire. The ones who are better able to resist these internal pressures are what Aristotle calls continent or enkratic. Although these agents are not virtuous, they do what virtuous agents do – they side with reason. On the other hand, incontinent or akratic agents are the ones who submit to their passions and go against reason. Lastly, the agents who outrightly refuse to even try to do what a virtuous agent would do, are what Aristotle calls vicious or evil. The vicious agent is an inversion of the virtuous one. The flaw central to their being is the inability to choose properly – these agents mistake virtue for vice and vice versa. The vicious might resort to greed, cowardice, and vanity as they see them as good and in contrast regard the virtuous, akratic and akratic as fools. For instance, a truly vicious person would cheat on their family member by lying to the judge in a court hearing and end up sending them to prison unjustly, and yet sleep soundly at night convinced they chose correctly. For Aristotle morality is not a matter of reason, hence desires, and passions are not what motivate an individual to do moral actions. For him, morality is a mix of both, reason and passion. He argues for an idea of rationality which is exhibited in intended passions or choice. While he agrees that reason on its own cannot move an individual to commit an action, he does not view practical reason as separate from the passions or desires of the said individual, as the latter provides the motivational force.

Aristotle’s definition of the city-state, or polis renders it to be a political association. According to him all associations of the sort, similar to all human acts initiate due to the pursuit of some good. A political association is the ultimate form of an association because it is composed of all other forms and is directed toward the ultimate goal, eudaimonia. According to him no ideal polis as a whole existed in his view but instead only some features that could come together to render an ideal polis. Meaning that the form of the good is implicitly present in what is defective. Aristotle was able to arrive at what the ideal polis could be through the process of adducing of impure or distorted illustrations of the polies so as to lead to a universal polis. The ideal polis presupposes a fundamental structure of the community, that is dictated by a constitution. It is governed by an aristocracy which promises benefits for the citizens on the basis of merit. It allows for legitimate ways of hierarchy as only the ones who deserve the most to govern are allowed to govern. Here, all Aristotelian agents achieve dikais, meaning, they work in accordance with the order of city-state, dike. Moreover, according to Aristotle, the polis can be understood as a community, a complex system of human relationships, personal as well as public, voluntary as well as coercive. For Aristotle being a rational agent presupposes the virtue of being just. His definition of justice has two separate meanings: one, human conduct in agreement with the law, and two, equality. From this, it can be inferred that for him justice as a virtue plays an important role both in the life of an individual and the community. An ideal polis requires its citizens to be just at the individual level. A sense of political association ties all the citizens of the polis together working towards a single agenda of sustaining the polis. It demands for dikaiosune, endorsing both distributive and corrective laws that make the community just. Aristotle sees everyone to follow a specific trajectory in their lives. An ideal agent hence progresses from a novice to a master in his lifetime. Due to the hierarchal structure of the community, the master is above the novice, and both of them are coordinated. The same hierarchal structure is obeyed by the notion of justice in the community, it reflects a top-down pattern. Justice can only be spread down from the top as only the ones who are at the top inculcate and exemplify the virtues of an Aristotelian agent such as courage, temperance, liberty, pride, and magnificence.

According to Aristotle, an agent is part of the polis similar to how a hand or a foot is part of the human body. If we disengage and remove, say a hand, from the body it loses its purpose and capacity to operate as a hand. Similarly, agents that are separated from the life of the polis cannot exhibit the features of an ideal agent as human nature is expressed in the forms of the polis. Once separated, agents are deprived of the justice or dikaiosune, both in its distributive and corrective sense, that comes with the prevalence of dike in the paradigmatic city-state. Aristotle's conception of citizenship is not determined by an agent's mere inhabitance in the polis, because slaves and foreigners too could be residents, but this does not coin them as citizens of the polis. He proposes that all those who are trained and are capable of becoming either the ruler or the rules, ought to be the citizens of the city-state. The citizens are required to respect the law of the city-state that is to obey the roles that are assigned in order to operate efficiently in the polis. Here, in the best kind of a polis, an individual goes through four significant stages during their life. Namely, childhood to puberty, puberty to twenty-four, healthy and strong adult life, and veteran older adult. During the first two stages, each individual goes through the process of learning and gaining knowledge about virtues of character and intelligence. Throughout life, one is indebted to the polis and is obligated to fulfill the roles assigned to one in service to the polis. In the youthful days, the individuals are required to act a resource to the polis in the form of a soldier. Whereas, when they grow up and enter the adult life they are obligated to work in the public office.

Contrastingly, Rand's conception of an ideal person is composed of three fundamental values, reason, purpose and self-esteem. These values correspond to three virtues, rationality, productivity and pride. For her reason is of chief importance as she regards it as a means of survival. Human survival is highly valued by every individual, and they must resort to thinking, tracking down, and practicing the means necessary to achieve it. Moreover, human beings, in Ayn Rand's view, have the capacity to practice free will – the notion that an individual has the power, by virtue of the choices he makes, to control the outcome of his own life. As she puts it,

“his [an individual’s] will has to be the spark plug” – Rand

In every moment, human beings are presented with several courses of action; whichever action they choose to follow, they could equally well have chosen to do something else. Within the sphere of actions that are open to human beings, what they choose to do is totally up to their discretion. This capacity of free choice and power of acting without any external constraint is the foundation of morality. Such an individual's moral stature is based on their commitment to their own thinking regarding all the issues that they come across in their lifetime. Moreover, the ideal man is selfish – in a positive sense. He is true to his values, to his convictions, to his thinking, to his mind, and to himself. For one to be true to oneself, one must first have a self. He must judge, he must think free from outside control, he must form values and he must act in accordance to and in pursuit of those values. While free will does play a part in the decision making, it is their capacity to reason which makes it possible for them to survive and flourish in society. The central theme is that each individual is rationally self-interested meaning that they are motivated only to act in their own self-interest. For instance, people who follow their rational self-interest expect to trade value for value like trading good and services for monetary compensation. An individual’s interests are not defined by what they feel like doing, instead they are identified by the help of reason. The process is such that by the use of logic and reason each individual considers all possible factors that they can identify, then they forecast all possible consequences attached to each of the courses of action, and hence choose the action course that takes precedent. Hence, it reflects what Rand emphasizes, that the supremacy of reason is the basis of all action. Similarly, reason does not operate automatically either. It is a personal choice to choose to activate your mind, to set in motion, and direct it to reflect on the facts. The rudimentary choice each agent needs to make is if they want to think or not. These principled policies of action are acquired character traits that Rand calls virtues. According to Rands conception, each ideal agent achieves the virtue of independence, which is to act by one's own efforts and not be influenced by others. Individuals should not sacrifice their own lives, actions, goals, or values for the life of another, nor should they force others to do so for them. According to Rand, living in an unconscious state of mind floating through reality is the greatest evil as such agents are considered to be irrational. While, each individual has the right to make rational or irrational decisions, making rational judgments is the only right way to live and hence enjoy a productive and happy life, as reflected in Roark's speech,

"Man cannot survive except through his mind" – Rand

By doing so, every individual enjoys what they value the most, their own life. Moreover, happiness is the highest goal in everyone's life. It is the measure of each individual's lifetime success based on their contribution to their own life and hence their own pleasure. Men devise their own goals and throughout their lifetime work on their own to pursue those goals. If personal goals are continuously sacrificed to the pursuit of other individuals’ goals, then the self cannot achieve happiness.

Rand's notion of the model society is the one where each individual is rationally self-interested and is engaged in the pursuit of satisfying their own happiness. Moreover, such a society achieves its status by adopting a Laissez-Faire approach, a policy which separates the state and the economy resulting in minimum government interference in the business of its citizens. According to this approach each individual pursuing their own self-interested goals is required help achieve the best form of the society he or she is a part of. Hence the primary function of the state is to provide security, maintain the order of the community without implementing force on any citizen excluding the ones who are considered evil. Moreover, the government maintains law and order through institutions like police and military but does not engage in the systematic redistribution of wealth in the form of social entitlements as self-interest is central to Rand's conception of community. It shuns the altruist perspective of self-sacrifice. In this society, the virtues that are looked up to are, productivity, and rationality, as long as they are in the service of an individual’s own life. Businessmen, and industrialists as the creators of wealth are considered to be glorious. If they plan to share their wealth through charity, it is considered as hobby and not an act of redeeming their past mistakes. Furthermore, it is evident from Roark's speech that the world is divided into halves. One half is occupied by the independent, rationally self-interested, creators whereas the other is occupied by the altruist, second-handers.

"The code of the creator is built on needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive" – Rand

Shows that man's survival in this universe requires a purpose, where every action and relevant purposes come together in support of the ultimate purpose of production. Similarly, man’s survival requires him to use reason to think and create products from scratch. To achieve rational purpose, he or she is required to realize his or her self-worth and hence develop self-esteem. Moreover, in order to achieve the ultimate good of happiness, he or she must be rationally self-interested which does not allow for an exchange of rewards between the undeserved. The way of life in this community is based on mutual interests of rationally self-interested individuals rather than self-sacrifice hence one's benefit and happiness cannot be derived at the expense of other citizens. Survival requires making value out of raw materials; hence each rationally self-interested individual must recognize the importance of creating and making new goods by being productive both morally and materially rather than being a second-hander, or a parasite. For her the question of how an individual should live their life superior to the question of how a community should.

Ayn Rand's notion of the ideal human being and society outrightly reject altruism as a moral practice as rational self-interest is central to her premise. On the other hand, Aristotle does not give a clear conception of individual concern for the well-being of others but instead presents a sympathetic exploration of how a human function when he or she seems to digress from his own telos to pursue the good of others. Nonetheless, he does insist that self-love was the highest form of love and maintained a conception of selfishness as part of the ideal agent as is was a requisite for a virtuous life. While Rand inherits the idea of selfishness from Aristotle, she takes it out of context. This specific issue can be better understood by exploring Aristotle's conception of virtue and friendship.

As discussed earlier, central to Aristotle's premise is the concept of living well, eudaimonia. He places friendship as one of the virtues necessary for achieving this ultimate state of happiness. In the lives of the virtuous agent, friendship is far more involved than just good will, assisting and aiding their gradual progression towards the end goal. His ethics are rooted in a social context, where the virtuous participate and interact with other citizens to ensure a just social order. Whereas Rand's conception of an ideal human being does not allow him or her to participate in such activities. This is evident when she declares that

"Man must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing other to himself" – Rand

Unlike Aristotle, in her eyes the road to a good life is completely individualistic and devoid of any altruistic acts. For Randian agents, friendships and love only exist to promote the well-being of the self. Relationships are based on self-interest as she says,

"What you fall in love with is the same values which you choose to be embodied in another person" – Rand, The Mike Wallace Interview

Hence, in her universe if an individual is unable to be genuinely happy being in communion with another individual, he or she must only focus on what benefits they receive. Aristotle would disagree with her stance as his emphasis on virtue and upon an individual's attainment of eudaimonia in life through virtuous, and reasoned actions revolves around living in a community with others, as a social creature.

While Rand's definition of happiness, deriving pleasure by achieving the three fundamental values through reason, mirrors what Aristotle presented in the shape of eudaimonia, she expands on it by illustrating two novel forms that happiness takes, productive work and romantic love. While Aristotle upheld educational achievement as an end, and the ability to reason as a distinctive quality in man, Rand upheld the application of knowledge in the industry as the goal of acquiring knowledge, and the ability to create and produce as the distinctive quality in a man. Rand identified the spiritual source production, by promoting industry moral ideal as she repeatedly mentions the creator, "The creator lives for his work", "The creator originates", "When the first creator invented the wheel" (Rand). etc. Secondly, she presents romantic love as a manifestation of happiness, something which is missing in Aristotle’s version of eudaimonia. For Aristotle, friendship took precedent over all types of happiness that came from social interaction in the polis. In Aristotle's view, women were not part of the polis hence making them devoid of education, a central aspect to providing intellectual companionship in the community which provides the foundation of friendship. Rand through her experiences was able to identify and recognize that both men and women were equal intellectually hence laying the basis of her premise. Aristotle could learn from Rand's contribution of productive work and romantic love as ingredients of happiness and realize the relationship between the mind and body of an individual.

Works Cited

Rand, Ayn. The Ayn Rand Reader. Ed. Leonard Peikoff Gary Hull. Penguin Group, n.d.

Rand, Ayn. The Mike Wallace Interview Mike Wallace. 1959. Video.